impish grins at sunset
by DarkBrightness
Summary: There was a darkness inside both of them that was irresistible. Short Midlink one-shot.


The clouds drifted lazily through the sky as the last sliver of sun disappeared under the Snowpeak Mountains. Link watched the blood spill from the gash at his side, and found he didn't care very much anymore. The pain seemed as far away as the night sky, and suddenly nothing mattered.

The imp girl watched him with glowing yellow-red eyes and a slight frown on her face. Link ignored her and felt emptiness fill his chest—there was no innocent freckle-faced Ilia, no young-but-old Colin, no princess with sad blue eyes. There were no Light Spirits or Zant or Twilight crawling over the land like a parasite, sucking the life out of everything and everyone. There was no responsibility, no invisible crushing weight on his shoulders, no terrified faces looking to him for protection.

There was nothing, and Link found that he liked it.

The monsters had kept coming and coming until they were on top of him, hitting and cutting and leaving bruises and blood. But still he made sure the wagon pulled through the gates of Kakariko Village, and that the girl who he had once thought he would marry was safe.

Except she remembered nothing, and the guilt hurt worse than the broken ribs and the countless scrapes and the sword wound that ran from his waist to his shoulder.

"You're going to die if you just sit here, you know," Midna said, and from the tone of her voice it didn't matter either way.

A morbid smile quirked up his cracked lips and he began to laugh for no particular reason, despite the fact that it shot jolts of agony up his ruined body. It was a hysterical laugh with insanity smeared across it, and Midna shook her head.

"Like you even _care_," he spat at her like burning acid. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't realize that you're using me, that you don't care about me or Zelda or this whole world?"

Link was cut short by a hacking cough that sent fresh waves of pain coming from his ribs. When he pulled his hand away from his mouth, his gloves were a shade darker.

He wondered how many times these gloves had been stained with blood, from centuries ago when he was a different Link in a different land. He still had memories—of a floating town in the sky and Loftwings soaring overhead, of splitting into four to fight a purple-cloaked sorcerer, of Kokiri Forest and a green-haired green-eyed girl, of a slender white conductor's baton and a pirate queen. And Zelda, always Zelda, with a different face but the same blue eyes. Sometimes she was a friend. Sometimes she was a princess he barely knew. Sometimes she was someone he loved.

Link looked up to find Midna facing away from him, head tilted back towards the heavens. The horizon was dashed with orange-red color, the last light of the day. "Twilight," she said very quietly. "Feels almost like home."

And suddenly Link was thinking of watching the sun set with Rusl, his mentor-trainer-father, and rounding up the goats before heading home for the night, and just like that his anger evaporated into the thick night air.

"Yeah," he agreed quietly. "Like home."

Link felt the tears prick the corners of his eyes and let them fall, because he was going to die here alone except for a shadowy imp girl who served only herself.

"Midna, do you know what today is?" he asked. She said nothing in reply. "It's my birthday. I'm eighteen, officially a man." Link laughed hollowly. "The kids would make me presents. Fado would give me the day off work. Rusl might give me extra sword lessons. Ilia would bake something and give me a kiss on the cheek. And instead, I'm lying here bleeding in a field. Isn't that ironic?"

Midna's tiny shoulders tensed, but she stayed silent, and Link wondered why he had expected any different.

"You know what the best part is? I don't even care anymore."

Her head turned very, very slowly, and her eyes were narrowed into yellow and red slits. "Zant chose the ball held in honor of the Twilight Princess's seventeenth birthday for his attack," she said, and there was nothing but void in her voice. "It was perfect. The whole kingdom was crowded into the palace. He was able to subdue the citizens and massacre the royal family, all in one night. Now he has total control of my realm, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."

Midna smiled, but it was bitter and sharp and twisted. "What a pair we make," she murmured almost too quietly for him to hear.

Before Link realized what she was doing, she had magic flowing around her hands like water, and it washed over him in a cool breeze. It filled his cuts and sealed them shut, molded his ribs back into place, and turned his bruised purple skin back to its normal shade.

"Midna…you…I didn't know you could heal."

She shrugged like it was nothing. "A birthday present for you, wolf boy."

Link stood up shakily, and as he took a step towards Kakariko he felt almost whole. "Midna? Thank you."

The corners of her mouth curved up into a mischievous grin, and in the moonlight it looked almost beautiful.


End file.
